The Gray Pages

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Your Republican Party, But Not Mine

Bill O'Reilly: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you're a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right. So I say you've got to cap with a number.

John McCain: In America today we've got a very strong economy and low unemployment, so we need addition farm workers, including by the way agriculture, but there may come a time where we have an economic downturn, and we don't need so many.

[crosstalk]

O'Reilly: But in this bill, you guys have got to cap it. Because estimation is 12 million, there may be 20 [million]. You don't know, I don't know. We've got to cap it.

Monday, May 28, 2007

Hail, O-Cab

Friday, May 25, 2007

Literally

dl004d sends a text: Dan Patrick has stated that a good closer is literally worth his weight in gold.

First, let's name some good closers. Eighteen pitchers have 10 or more saves so far this year. For simplicity's sake, let's accept that the ones at the top of the list are great closers. The middle of the list has 3 guys with 13 saves: Trevor Hoffman, Al Reyes, and Brian Fuentes. Let's call these three "good."

What I find most interesting about this is just how few hits Joe DiMaggio had over his career - four more than Willie Randolph and seven more than Willie Wilson, to name two. But then I remembered that DiMaggio lost 3 years to World War II. And it's reasonable, given that he was absolutely, positively at the top of his game in those years, to think that 3 more 180-hit seasons would have been in order, bringing his career total to 2,754 -- 20 fewer than Andre Dawson.

Could someone explain to me how this man was ever described as the Greatest Living Ballplayer?

And, to open up an entirely different can of worms, is it possible that Jeter will play long enough -- moving to 3rd base, then 1st base, then DH -- that he could possibly, conceivably threaten 4,256? He gets to play for as long as he wants to -- no Yankee owner will ever cut him. The question is, does he want to play until he's 45, or doesn't he?

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

I'm pretty sure he wasn't joking

Rick Sutcliffe starts sensibly and then returns to form:

"The Yankees got lucky, because Josh Beckett is on the DL. And they won't have to face Dice-K, because it's not his turn in the rotation. And they're lucky that they don't have to play the Red Sox on a Thursday, because the Sox are 7-0 on Thursdays so far this year."